Understanding Chess Middlegames Paperback – January 10, 2012

The layout of this book is similar to Nunn's Understanding Chess Endgames. After a couple of short introductory chapters, the meat is 100 fundamental issues in middlegame play. Each of the 100 points receives only two pages of coverage. Because these are middlegames rather than endgames, each point typically only has two examples, rather than the 3 or 4 in the similar endgame book. So this is no in-depth training manual. However, Dr. Nunn has done his usual good job of chossing instructive examples with multiple points. Just as important, he invested a lot of time coming up with a list of 100 fundamental issues that were genuinely a good survey of the middlegame. They are divided into several large topics: Attacking play, certain material imbalances (for example, queen versus 3 minor pieces), themes in defense, pawn structures in the middlegame. He ends with the most common types of mistakes people make during the middlegame, including critical things such as automatically accepting sacrifices, over- or underestimating an attack, and overestimating the value of the two bishops.It's worth listing the pawn structures he points to: Isolated pawn in general; isolated queen pawn; closed Ruy Lopez; Winawer French; Scheveningen; Najdorf; Caro-Kann (also the Slav); Sämisch King's Indian; Benoni. As you can see, this is hardly a comprehensive survey of middlegame pawn structures, but the 8 covered (not including isolated pawns in general) cover a terrific amount of chess knowledge and a large majority of games played. When you consider that other sections focus on pawn chains, hanging pawns, and doubled pawns, most important pawn structures are covered.Similarly, the chapter on the attack nods to several classic sacrifices: Bxh7+ (obviously), sacrifices on H6, g7, and f7; and several standard sacrifices in the Sicilian, as well as looking at Rook lifts, the long diagonal, attacking a fianchettoed position, and more.Overall, this book isn't a comprehensive training manual; such a work would probably be several thousand pages long. Rather, it's a good way to check your grasp of middlegame play. If you play through each section of the book, you'll quickly identify which areas of middlegame play you need to improve on. If you see nothing new in the section on the attack, but the sections on defensive play are a revelation, that's probably a good place to focus. Any unfamiliar theme is worthy of follow-up in your own study.I'm just hoping that Nunn will follow this up with a couple more volumes on the middlegame, as he did with the endgame. There's no hint of this yet, but hey, I can dream, can't I?

Even knowing English GM Nunn to be a wonderful chess author, this book exceeded my expectations. Nunn has done a remarkable job of covering well the vast sea that is the middlegame in just over 200 pages. In 100 topics, with 2 pages devoted to each, a wealth of middlegame instruction is clearly and logically explained. Expected topics like Attack, Defense, Pawn Structure are covered. All these are covered with very well chosen and annotated examples. Where the book goes beyond 'standard' for me is when he covers topics like Typical Mistakes (eg 'Missing a Tactical Defense', 'Lack of Alertness', 'Quitting'), and Activity (eg, 'The Curse of Passivity'). There is extensive coverage of how to play with various material imbalances (a topic that often separates strong players from their weaker opponents, and thus one worth learning). Does this book replace such immortal tomes as Nimzovich's 'My System'? Probably not. But I would definitely start with Nunn, as it does not have the quirks and distortions of emphasis that Nimzo is infamous for. Highly recommended. ADDENDUM: I should point out that this is not a middlegame primer, but is geared for more advanced players, from around 1600 or so USCF right up to master strength. Lower rated players would be much better served by studying more basic middlegame material such as Seirawan's 'Winning Chess Strategies' and go through some basic games collections like Giddins' '50 Essential Chess Lessons' before tackling this book.

The middlegame is a very difficult (impossible?) subject to address in a reasonably-sized book and John Nunn does a credible job. Much of the problem comes from the nature of the middlegame itself; it has neither the self-organizing nature of the opening where a few early moves often dictate the course of the entire game nor the relative apparent simplicity of the endgame (due to the reduced number of pieces remaining) which allows easier classification (rook endgames, minor piece endgames, etc.) of the various situations. In contrast, the middle game is chaos.This is a breadth over depth book and it will probably be of most use to advanced beginners or middle-strength players. No one book could hope to address in depth the broad range of topics that can arise in middle game positions in a reasonable number of pages. So Nunn takes a reasonable approach and chooses 100 topics in 7 major categories and provides two examples of each topic. And to illustrate the chaotic nature of the middlegame, each topic really consists of an example and a counterexample, one illustration where the application of the topic succeeds and one where it fails. Thus, the treatment of the isolated queen pawn (IQP) has one example in which the side with the IQP (White) uses the dynamic potential of the IQP to push through a win and one example where the IQP is successfully blockaded and the side without the IQP succeeds in getting good piece activity and getting the win.Noteworthy is the clear analysis that Nunn provides with each example, pointing out a remarkable number of inaccuracies by both sides. Either the winner of the game could often have found ways to win quicker or the loser of the game missed opportunities to either delay the loss, force a draw, or even reverse the result. This is not meant to criticize the players or demean their achievement in any way, it is merely a reflection of the complex nature of middlegame positions. It is much easier to find better moves after the fact with a lot of time on one's hands and the help of a good chess engine than to find the precise required moves over the board with the clock ticking.I'm giving the book 4 stars rather than the 5 stars that it may deserve when considering its intended audience primarily because of my own personal bias. I just can't visualize a single book addressing this broad topic that could deserve 5 stars. Certainly if the book were narrower in scope each major category and many of its topics could easily become an individual book with many more examples and different levels of difficulty and subtlety. But that would then be a completely different book and could not be compared with this book. So overall I am very satisfied with this book and would recommend it without hesitation to its intended audience.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!